What were you doing on September 11, 2001?

I was in middle school when it happened, the grade, that is. It was still very early in my time zone and I was still in bed. After I woke up for school my dad was on the phone with my mom who was in CO visiting my sister who had just had an operation, and I didn't know what was going on but he was really upset. I was young but old enough to understand what was going on, I wanted to stay home and watch the news, but he made me go to school. We had TVs in some of the classrooms and some of the teachers allowed us to keep it on and watch but none of the other students except for a few seemed to even care, maybe they were just too young to understand what was happening, or just didn't care...but either way I was amazed by their lack of concern...

That evening all I did was watch the news, see it happening over and over, hear them talking about it...and all I could ask was "why?"

I've just gotten out of bed, walked into the kitchen and turned the TV on, wondering why was there a plane-crash movie instead of the regular morning news? Then I realized what was actually happening ..... I'll never forget that day.

It was my effin' 14th birthday. My sister brought me some balloons, and cupcakes for my homeroom, and some flowers.

(Sorry if i sound bitter, I'm cranky..)

Yeah, I was at home too that day. I wasn't feeling well, so had stayed in bed, and turned the TV on to see what did not seem real. I cannot believe it has been 10 years. My jaw dropped when I realized it was very real, and as the horror continued to unfold, I was basically frozen in front of the TV with my mouth agape.

I was in class

Oh my goodness! How awful (and tragic) for you. I was only in the 6th grade. The teachers were scrambling and scattering around in a serious panic and then they turned the TV on and nobody said a word for the rest of the day... unbelievable. What a real shame.

It was night here and I was watching tv when they interrupted the show for the news report

It was my freshman year of high school, and I was in my second period English class. I remember the principal at the time coming on the PA to tell us that a plane had struck one of the World Trade Center towers. We'd get updates throughout the day, and the library had set up a screen to play the news so students could watch on their lunch hour. Mine was 7th period. I watched the towers fall during lunch. It was a sad day.

I was in the Civil Air Patrol at the time, and we met on Tuesday nights. We were out doing exercises in a park next to our Legion Hall in our BDU's and people driving by were throwing eggs at us. Not every car, but there were enough that we canceled the rest of the meeting and met in plain clothes for the rest of the month. It was a good thing the meeting was ended early, because when I got home I was informed that my cousin was giving birth. I went to the hospital with my mom and got to see my cousin's son that night.

At home, taking care of my youngest baby. My husband called me and asked if I had the TV on. I didn't. He said, "Two planes just flew into both of the Twin Towers in NYC." I said, "OMG, was it an accident." He said, "No, I bet it was Bin Laden, that Mother Fucker."

I went and got my baby and turned on the TV, then the Pentagon was attacked, I was so scared, they thought it was a car bomb at first. I called my husband back and he calmed me down a bit. At one point the news said there could be as many as 12 other planes in the air with terrorists on them. We live near O'Hare Airport, so I was terrified. I packed a bag for our family, in case we had to get out.

I was sitting in a chair near a window and planes were going over every, what seemed like 20 seconds. That scared me further. I called my husband again (he was not able to come home from work) and he said, "They are probably closing off American airspace and bringing all the planes in." A few minutes later they announced on the news that that exact thing was happening. I don't remember where I was when the plane crashed in PA. But, I was in the kitchen making my baby an egg when the first tower fell. She was not even two and was very quiet all day. She just clung to me and nursed almost constantly. She felt my fear and the tension. She kept telling me "No cie Mama." (Don't cry, in baby talk.) I walked back into the living room, and couldn't see one tower on the news and thought the smoke had obscured it. Then they announced "The New York skyline has been changed forever." I realized that building had fallen.

I just spent the day holding my baby and crying. I picked up one of my kids, as the teachers in school were glued to the TVs and walking around like zombies and the kids were just walking out. She went to a friend's house until her mom came home. My other child stayed in school, and I figured she was safe there. She got home and they had told the kids virtually nothing. I still don't know how I feel about that.

I spent the next few weeks waiting for the "other shoe" to drop. I didn't sleep well for weeks.

I was in 2nd period physics class. My teacher just stopped the lecture and put the tv on for the rest of the class. Every other teacher I had did the same thing - we pretty much just watched the news all day.

I was at home in bed. My husband, as per his usual habit at the time since he was a day trader then, had gotten up and turned on the news to CNN to watch the ticker tape at the bottom of the screen. I rolled over sleepily to see the usual CNN background of the New York skyline with the focus on the Twin Towers. Everything looked normal, save for a cloud of black smoke trailing from near the top of one of the towers. I asked my husband about it, and he said he didn't know what had caused it. The anchors didn't know either and were casually speculating about it while going on with their usual announcements. There was no concern at all that it was a terrorist attack yet, and they were instead speculating that a private plane had accidentally crashed into the building.

For some reason, I was riveted by the mystery of the cloud smoke, though the anchors and my husband did not seem to think it was such a big deal at the time. I stretched and sat up--and watched 9/11 unfold live before my horrified eyes. I watched as the usually articulate anchors fumbled live on the air and lost all composure as we, as viewers and anchors, slowly came to the realization together that this was a terrorist attack.

As they discussed the possibility of the towers falling, I vividly imagined frantic people trying to get down the stairwells. I imagined those who would be unable to navigate the stairs: those who were frail and elderly, those who were handicapped, etc. I imagined--in horror--their terror. I imagined the heroes that I know existed who took the time to stop, amidst the press of frantic and rushing bodies, to help the helpless get down those stairs. I imagined a couple of people trying to carry a wheelchair-bound person down all those flights of stairs while people pushed, screamed, and pressed to get by them. But I knew it was a rush against time and just how many flights of stairs there were for them to navigate, and my heart was just a cold stone in my throat. I imagined the danger into which the police officers and firefighters would be grimly, yet determinedly, rushing headlong. The firefighters and police officers knew the danger into which they were rushing, so most of them must have known that they would probably die. Yet where there was such palpable and overwhelming human need, they were compelled to go. I am filled with the most profound awe and the deepest respect for them.

As I thought about the first responders to this nightmarish scene, I felt physically ill and completely impotent. I just prayed and prayed and prayed repetitively for all the responders and the trapped victims all day long.

I will never forget the dazed look on so many people's ash-covered faces when those towers fell. I was thousands of miles away and felt just as dazed as they felt. But I felt guilty to be home safe in my room. For weeks afterward, however, I didn't feel safe at all. I, too, kept waiting for another shoe to drop, and I was terrified to be separated from my husband. Every time we were apart, I imagined what it would be like for disaster to strike and for me to frantically and fruitlessly try to contact him or my other family members.

If I was scarred by what happened on 9/11 just by viewing what unfolded from a safe distance on a television screen, I simply cannot imagine what wounds are carried by those who were actually there.

My heart goes out to everyone who was there that day or who lost someone in the attacks. And for everyone who had a direct hand in helping in the aftermath of those attacks, I send a heartfelt thank you. You are heroes.

I was in math class, in middle school when they made an announcement about what had happened. I was a little confused, but our school wouldn't let us watch the news (some of my other friends watched it at their schools) so I didn't get the full gist of it until I went home and watched all of the footage.

I was taking the number 3 bus to Walmart to do some household shopping and the bus driver had the radio on as she always did. It was just a few minutes into it and the rumors said a bomb had gone off at the WTC. I got out at Walmart and got inside and everyone was staring up at the screens which showed the news with two towers smoking and the realization that it was an attack ...

I managed to get the shopping done (despite being transfixed to the news), then got home as soon as I could and turned the news on at home. My then-husband called to say that his company lost seven executives on one of the planes; they were all coming back from a convention in Boston.

When the news kept showing footage of the second plane flying straight towards the tower ... fully knowing the horror of those people - both in the plane and in the building - realizing that they were going to die within the next few seconds ... I threw up three times because of that ...

Just weeks before I had an unexplained, disturbed feeling of 'What if somebody attacked us?' and tried to forget about it. I feel a bit of guilt that there was nothing I could do despite this 'warning' I had.

September 11, 2001 was a gray, foggy day in the coastal town where I grew up. I was in fifth grade. I woke up around 7 AM, an hour before school started, to find my mom and sister in the living room outside my bedroom watching the news. One of them had called my name to get up and come out there. We were all three shocked and worried and unsure what to feel or do. My sister's friend picked her up for school (she was a Sophomore at that point), I got dropped off at school after watching the news for as long as we could, and my mom went to work.

Once at school, my teacher told us what was happening as simply as she could, comforted us, and turned on the news for us to form our own opinions of what was happening. Looking back, I respect her so strongly for that. Unfortunately, our ultra-conservative principal got on the loudspeaker almost immediately and ordered the teachers to turn off all televisions and focus only on lessons for the day. Rather than protect us children, this caused more fear and confusion in us, as lack of communication tends to do... I also feel bad for the teachers, who were shut out from the news as well.

Once the news screen cut to black, I felt instantly shut out from the world. What was happening now? Was my mom safe? What had caused those planes to crash? It was as though by cutting the flow of information and news, I and my classmates had been sealed inside a box. I listened, imaging the roar of planes overhead despite us being a non-major town on the west coast.

The lesson I took from that at age 10 was: don't censor children from tragedy and grief; help them understand it.

I was in the eigth grade, and school let out early because the building needed to be used for people coming in from flights overseas. I pick up my little sister at her school, then went to my grandmothers house and watched footage of the Pentagon, as we had a family member work there at the time.

I was on a school bus driving into DC. Needless to say we turned around and went back to school. None of the teachers told us what had happened, but my mom picked me up early from school that day and we all sat around the tv next to each other just watching.

I took private music lessons and heard it from my music teacher. He was always the type to joke around, so I really didn't believe him until I turned on the TV...

I was working at a call center, and all the phone calls immediately stopped. The company I worked for actually called to check the phone lines before she saw what was happening on the news. We were sent home early that day.

i was sitting in my 7th grade science class, which was my 1st period. my teacher was on her computer while we were answering a few quick questions in our book. she got up & was like, what, my husband just emailed me & said that a plane just flew into the pentagon. she turned on the news & there were the 2 world trade building in new york smoking after just being hit. i remember being confused thinking, wait, i though the pentagon was 5 sided. i found out later that day that they were the world trade centers & not the pentagon. i didn't see images of the pentagon until i got home. 1/2 way through the day, the principle came on over the intercom & told the teachers to turn off their tvs & that they weren't allowed to have them on for the rest of the day.

...It's honestly hard to believe it's been a decade since then. Time surely flies, and while my memory isn't even close to being the best, it's impossible to not remember that day and the events that followed after.

If my memory serves me right, I had just recently turned nine years old and was in fifth grade. To be honest, despite this being such a tragic day in our nation's history, one I'll never forget, it was very difficult for me, at the time, to grasp the sheer magnitude and severity of the horror that had happened.

I had been very sheltered as a child, I experienced things fairly late, and the realm of my world was the house I lived in, school, and a few adults and the fact that we always had money problems. Also, where I live, it's very common to just go at your own pace, take life easy and slowly, almost going with the flow kind of deal and be happy you survived the next day. Along with that hazy sort of living style, and not having much exposure combined with my parents never really having the time to watch things with me or tell me much of anything. It wasn't until the end of my fourth grade year that I really started researching and going online myself to learn things on my own.

When it did happen, we were working on science vocabulary for the cell, everything was calm and dandy, and then suddenly I hear my teacher frantically shrieking, having heard via intercom or some other means that one of the planes crashed. It was just such surprise that none of us were expecting it. I just... didn't understand it at all. I didn't understand if these tragedies were common or uncommon, or what caused them or how it was caused. I just simply didn't know what to make of the situation and was just left very hollow and clueless and troubled. It wouldn't be until the next some days afterward that we watched it on the news and started seeing the death toll count that it really started to set in. That was what everybody was talking about, I knew family members that had been affected, people were constantly on edge, etc, and it was truly devastating.

I know my account may seem really insensitive, and it's by no means to be offensive, but it was how I felt at the time and it wouldn't be until much later that I grasped the situation in its entirety properly. It always makes me feel ashamed that I hadn't felt more at the time whenever I try to recount what happened on 9/11. I feel different now, yes, but still.

Skipping gym class.